This year, Scorsese was the Graduation speaker for the Tisch School of the Arts at the Salute.

Many of my classmates graduated this year and heard him speak live, but I just watched this last week thanks to this tweet.

The style is casual, but it’s an inspiring speech. He talks about the highs, the joys, finding inspiration, but where he really focuses is on how to keep doing it, on enjoying the process, the act of creating, on embracing the struggle.

A few lines really stood out for me:

The force of disappointment can be alchemized into something that will, paradoxically, renew you.

You have to be singular, inflexible, unyielding in your own work so that even the struggle, the very struggle to achieve, becomes its own reward.